Tennessee Restaurant Owner Kicks Out Anti-Gay Senator
Over Offensive Anti-Gay Comments
Last week, Republican Tennessee state senator Stacey Campfield (right) told LGBT journalist Michelangelo Signorile that it was “virtually impossible” to get HIV/AIDS through heterosexual sex, and that only gay people get the disease. He also claimed that HIV began after a gay man had sex with a monkey. Of course, we all know that Campfield’s claims are wrong because heterosexuals contract HIV as well. Take former NBA legend Magic Johnson for instance. He’s a heterosexual male who contracted the disease because he had sexual intercourse with multiple women over the course of his career. Countless other heterosexual men and women have contracted HIV over the decades. This is part of the alternative knowledge system that David Frum was referring to in December of last year. In it, homosexuality is the root cause of AIDS and should be demonized. Conservatives get away with such blatant lies because they live in a bubble safe from criticism. This time, though, Campfield’s outrageous comments have landed him in hot water and one local restaurant in Knoxville, Tennessee is teaching him a lesson.
The owner of Bistro at the Bijou booted Senator Campfield out of the establishment because of his false and inflammatory comments about the LGBT community and HIV/AIDS as well as his failed ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill. A post on the restaurant’s Facebook page, which has over 1300 likes in 18 hours, reads;
“I hope that Stacy Campfield now knows what if feels like to be unfairly discriminated against.”
Martha Boggs, the owner of the bistro, told the Knoxville News Sentinel, “He’s gone from being stupid to dangerous. It’s just my way of standing up to a bully.”
There is a Facebook campaign to oust Campfield from office and you can also sign this petition.
Republican lawmakers have taken aim at the LGBT community more frequently in recent years, and many anti-gay advocates have added their own hateful rhetoric and false claims. One activist, Linda Harvey, told her listeners on her radio broadcast that there isn’t any proof that LGBT people exist , and Right Wing pastor Mark Driscoll said that masturbation is a form of homosexuality. Undoubtedly, more hateful rhetoric will occur as same-sex becomes legal in more states and those afraid of equality and change become increasingly frantic that history is passing them by.
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